Bovine Dendritic Cell Growth Kits

If your research requires you to generate dendritic cells, the Bio-Rad bovine dendritic cell growth kits can save you the time and effort of developing your own method and optimizing the individual reagents.

The kits contain biologically active recombinant Interleukin-4 (IL-4) and Granulocyte Macrophage-Colony Stimulating Factor (GM-CSF), supplied as a liquid and premixed at optimal concentrations to induce dendritic cell development from PBMC.

*Bovine antibody known to cross-react with ovine samples
**Human antibody known to cross-react with bovine and ovine samples

A combination of the presence and absence of various cell markers can be used for cell surface phenotyping of DCs. Selecting the most appropriate antibodies to go with your dendritic cell growth kit can be a challenge. View our suggested references below, or contact our technical experts for advice.

Generating Dendritic Cells from Monocytes

Dendritic cells (DC) are the only professional antigen presenting cells (APC) capable of effectively initiating a primary immune response in naïve animals. They are extremely versatile and have been widely used in research to advance our understanding of host-pathogen interactions, innate immunity and adaptive immunity.

Because dendritic cells are not prevalent in the blood stream, a model whereby DC are derived from monocytes by culture with cytokines is widely used for research purposes.

Monocytes present in cell culture are enriched by depleting the other cells. Cytokines are then added: Interleukin 4 (IL-4) to suppress monocyte development, and Granulocyte Macrophage Colony Stimulating Factor (GM-CSF) to stimulate the transformation of monocytes to DC. This technique is commonly used to study DC from many species, including bovine, and canine. The progeny have a characteristic morphology and phenotype. DC do not express CD14 (a monocyte/macrophage marker) but have high levels of MHC molecules (HLA-ABC, DR, DQ, and DP), adhesins (CD54, CD58 and CDllc), and co-stimulatory molecules (CD40 and B7/CD80). The co-stimulatory molecules, CD80 and CD86, are up-regulated during DC activation.

To date, no single cell marker expressed exclusively on DC has been identified. Therefore a combination of the presence and absence of various cell markers can be used. DC can be identified using cell surface phenotyping by demonstrating a high level of MHC Class II or co-stimulatory molecule such as CD80 or CD86, and the absence of lineage markers, such as CD3 (T cell), CD14 (monocyte), CD19 (B cell), CD56 (NK cell) and CD66b (granulocyte).